Ecofascism came into the spotlight on social media in 2021 as the world suffered through another year of Covid and several natural disasters that are directly caused by climate change.
We are slowly but surely approaching the second year of the pandemic. By now, it is clear that the new year will not bring back the previous “normal”. The regulations will still be in place, but as we have seen in the past year, Covid will be less and less relevant in a world where wildfires, floods and extreme temperatures become the new normal. But on the darker side of Twitter and forum sites like Reddit, an extremist community has more radical solutions to climate change and Covid.
Ecofascism is an extremist political movement that blends Neo-Nazism with environmentalism, based on the belief that certain populations (meaning mostly people of color) are to blame for climate change and pollution. Their solution to the world’s top problems right now is through eugenics (the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations – as by sterilization – to improve the population’s genetic composition – Merriam-Webster) and brutal suppression of immigrants. Blaming people of color and immigrants for all the wrongs in the world is definitely not a new idea, as its most recent consequences were seen in the hate crimes against Asian people that occurred after the spread of Covid in 2020.
As we know, consumerism produces massive amounts of waste and CO2 that affect our planet. Western countries and China are the world’s biggest producers of waste and CO2, however, eco-fascists incorrectly put the blame on marginalized and mostly poor populations for polluting and having many children. A widespread false belief that is not limited to ecofascist circles is that the size of the human population today strains the Earth’s natural resources, and in the future will cause massive immigration towards northern countries, creating a world that will lose cultural stability. The key to the world’s salvation is through “deep ecology” – reduction of the human population as one of the most famous promoters of ecofascism, Pentti Linkola, says: “When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.”
Besides the white nationalism and Anti-Semitism, an ecofascist can be spotted regularly posting on social media imagery of forests and mountains, putting trees and nature-related emojis in their names and glorifying Norse mythology figures. The Norse rune that most ecofascists display on their profiles to identify one another is called Algiz, the “life” rune: “ᛉ” or “ᛦ”. It became popular after World War 2 in Germany as a Neo-Nazi symbol since the previous Neo-Nazi symbols were banned.
Ecofascism chooses to ignore the actual causes of climate change and its perpetrators. Worldwide, only 100 companies are to blame for 71% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Half of this number is made up of 25 companies that include Exxon, Shell and Chevron. The catastrophic natural phenomena that we see today and that we will see in the future, the extinction of many species and the lack of food will be caused by these companies.
This extremist ideology, covered on the internet under photos of forests and Thor and environmentally friendly messages, is dangerous and fast-spreading, advocating for racist and murderous ideas. While it may seem far-fetched to say that the majority would be fooled by such rhetoric, even seemingly innocent posts that emerged during quarantine, such as the video with dolphins swimming in the canals of Venice, put forth through inadequate messaging the concept that “humanity is the virus”, in the end promoting what eco-fascism stands for, genocide.
